Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Pakalolo Prohibition

Below, excerpts from a letter that members of Congress in favor of legalizing marijuana sent to the federal government.

The people of Colorado and Washington have decided that marijuana ought to be regulated like alcohol.

The voters chose to eliminate the illegal marijuana market controlled by cartels and criminals ....

These states have chosen to move from a drug policy that spends millions of dollars turning ordinary Americans into criminals toward one that will tightly regulate the use of marijuana while raising tax revenue to support cash-strapped state and local governments.

.... we ask that your departments [the feds] take no action against anyone who acts in compliance with the laws of Colorado, Washington and any other states that choose to regulate marijuana for medicinal or personal use.

The tide of public opinion is changing both at the ballot box and in state legislatures across the country. We believe that the collective judgment of voters and state lawmakers must be respected.

I haven't the vaguest idea who it was that grouped pakalolo together with meth, cocaine and heroin in the War on Drugs, but it must have been someone high on morality. No one has died from an overdose of pakalolo. Ever. If they were tossed in the same bin of cadavers, than it was with a mixture of other drugs in their system. Ditto with traffic statistics in that context. Thus, it's high time that the laws against reacreational use of pakalolo was updated to, well, no laws against it.

It costs too much to prosecute and incarcerate pakalolo offenders with money that could have been spent elsewhere. And, of course, the tax revenues that the legalized product would have brought in and will never be recouped. If this wasn't bad enough, pakalolo prohibition has proven a windfall to it's beneficiaries, both the prison-industrial complex and the drug dealers. The last thing that either of them would like to see is recreational pakalolo use be decriminalized. Meanwhile, pakalolo prohibition has made the image of pakalolo as a gateway drug a self-fulfilling prophesy simply because pakalolo people have to intermingle and rub shoulders with the hard drug crowd, just as in the Prohibition era, alcohol parlors had backrooms that served the heroin clients and prostitution johns.

To clarify, decrimalizing pakalolo does not legalize wholesale pakalolo growing. In the 18 states that allow medical pakalolo, only hardships cases are allowed to grow their own and limited to one or two house plants. The argument against legalized pakalolo that goes something like, "but legalization would create a huge underground market to resell to minors," is true to some extent, but the fact is that there already is a black market for minors who like blow the weed.

If you haven't been out in your neighborhood lately, I'll kindly inform you that there's an ongoing meth epidemic. I don't smoke pakalolo myself nor inhale so forth, but I personally blame pakalolo prohibition for the meth plague. Meth is readily available to anybody and meth doesn't take months to grow. Then there's the meth related crimes especially home burglaries. There is nothing good in meth. Every part of the pakalolo plant can be used for something useful. For example, The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. There are parts of the pakalolo plant that possess the medicinal effects without the high.

The costs to produce heroin is a whopping 2% of its street price. Ridiculously low for pakalolo as well. Oregon had legalizing pakalolo, Measure 80, on the ballot, along with Washington
and Colorado. Oregon voters gave it a thumbs down. The difference in the Oregon version was that licensed growers would sell their harvests to the state, and the state would dispense it exclusively through licsensed outlets. However, Measure 80 was excessively progressive. It would allow adults to grow and possess limitless amounts of marijuana for personal use. The limitless growing amount is not so far out as it seems. The grower would be wiser selling surplus stock to the state instead of risk being caught for selling without a licsence to strangers who might rob the seller or rat on the seller.